A Waymo robotaxi it was were vandalized and then set on fire by a mob Saturday night in San Francisco’s Chinatown district. The incident is the latest encounter between driverless vehicles and the public in San Francisco, a city where autonomous vehicle companies have spent years testing the technology on public roads.
The incident on Saturday night, which was captured on video and shared on social media channels, did not appear to be a concerted effort. Instead, the video shows a crowd becoming enraged and violent when the driverless vehicle is surrounded.
A Waymo spokesperson confirmed that there were no passengers in the driverless vehicle at the time. The company announcement:
At approximately 9:00 PM on Saturday, February 10, a fully autonomous Waymo vehicle was driving through San Francisco when a crowd surrounded and vandalized the vehicle, breaking the window and throwing a firework inside, which set the vehicle on fire. The vehicle was carrying no passengers and no injuries have been reported. We are working closely with local security officials to respond to the situation.
This isn’t the first time the citizens of San Francisco have messed with a driverless vehicle. And it probably won’t be the last.
Last summer, a decentralized group of safe streets activists in San Francisco disabled robotaxis across the city by placing a traffic cone on the hood of a vehicle.
“Cone Week,” as the group called the viral prank on Twitter and TikTok, was a form of protest against the proliferation of robotaxi services in the city. The protest came before a California Public Utilities Commission hearing in which Cruise and Waymo received the final permit required for the commercial operation of robotaxi services in San Francisco.
There have also been videos showing people attacking Cruise’s robotaxi. But with Cruise currently suspended from operating in the city, Waymo is the only driverless robotaxi service and the most visible symbol of autonomous technology in the city.
